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Explore all of the quotations in our Living Book…
Keep knocking, and the joy inside
will eventually open a window
and look out to see who’s there.
It is time to explain myself… let us stand up.
The man who spends his life in sensual acts performs acts that depend on temporary causes beyond his control. Of himself he does nothing, but it seems to him that he is acting independently. In reality, all that he imagines he is doing by himself is done through him by a higher power; he is not the creator of life but its prisoner. But the man who devotes his life to the recognition and practice of the truth revealed to him unites himself with the source of universal life, and accomplishes not personal or individual acts that depend upon time and space, but acts that have no cause, but are in themselves causes of all else, and have an endless significance.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sounds. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing.
Why does no man confess his vices? Because he is yet in them. It is for a waking man to tell his dream.
Freedom is a new religion.
The worst kind of shame is being ashamed of frugality or poverty.
The more detached and the purer the prayer, the more acceptable is it in the presence of God.
It is only after a man has rid himself of all pretence, and taken refuge in mere unembellished existence, that he is able to attain that peace of mind which is the foundation of human happiness.
Philosophy is, to tell the truth, a homesickness, an effort to return to home.
A man’s affections are just as fully satisfied by the smallest circle as they can be by a larger circle.
Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, have oft-times no connection. Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom in minds attentive to their own.
The truth is always the strongest argument.
Those for whom the world smells only of matter, smell themselves only; those that see nothing but passing phenomena, see themselves and no deeper. Not in contemplation of the stars that wheel across the sky shall we discover Thee, O God, Thou who didst enrich with madness Don Quixote! The discovery comes by watching, from the depths of our hearts, the soaring of love’s aspirations. Love is the fairest and most profitable guest that a reasonable creature can entertain. To God it is the most acceptable and pleasing of all things. Not only does it comfort the spirit with sweetness and wisdom, and make her one with God, but it doth so constrain flesh and blood that a man slip never into the snare of trivial beguilements. In the light and warmth of love our life grows strong and comely; a better dwelling, nor a sweeter, never I found.
A life lived for tomorrow never comes, a life lived for yesterday never changes, but a life lived for today is full of wonder, mystery and the choice to live happily ever after moment by moment.
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
No announcements tell the world that he has come into enlightenment. No heralds blow the trumpets proclaiming man’s greatest victory — over himself. This is in fact the quietest moment of his whole life.
Love is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love.
Wisdom of a person makes the face shine, but not the face of the body, not a part of the flesh, but the face of the inner person. The face of the inner person is illuminated by wisdom. But wisdom, light, Logos, truth and the other conceptions are identical when applied to Christ.
It is right to yield to the truth.
